Budget Status

From Congress Daily:

House and Senate Democrats are considering making the Labor-Health and Human Services [Fiscal Year 2008] Appropriations bill [which includes Social Security] the next major domestic policy fight with President Bush after the debate over children's health insurance. ...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring it up as early as Oct. 15, and sources said upon passage, House-Senate negotiators could quickly reconcile their differences and send the measure to the White House for Bush's expected veto.

The tactic would be similar to the current standoff over the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which Democrats perceive as a political winner despite lacking the votes to override a veto. ...

Bush says he will veto the Labor-HHS measure because it spends billions of dollars more than he wants; the House measure, at $11 billion above his request, fell several votes short of enough for a potential override.

The Senate version is roughly $9 billion above the request. ...

Leadership aides said Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have discussed the option but have not made a final decision, in part because the Labor-HHS bill has to clear the Senate. That is shaping up to be at least a weeklong battle with contentious debate over stem-cell language, which Bush is likely to threaten a veto over, as well as funding priorities and earmarks.

One reason Reid has delayed the Labor-HHS measure thus far is because Republicans have threatened numerous amendments.

No Statute Of Limitations?

Shouldn't there be a limit on this sort of thing? From KETV in Omaha:

An orphan is being asked to refund money paid to him 30 years ago by the Social Security Administration.Jay Rovang, 50, is a disabled man on a fixed income. He said he got a letter from SSA, stating that it wants to collect benefits it overpaid him totaling $662. ...

A Social Security representative said the agency puts no time limit on collecting overpayments. The representative said it was only recently when Rovang started receiving disability checks that the system was triggered to collect the childhood debt.The letter to Rovang says Social Security will deduct the overpayment from his December disability check, leaving him with $421 for the entire month.

Italy Goes In Different Direction Than U.S

The Social Security Administration has issued its International Update for September with information about Social Security programs in other countries. This caught my eye:

The Italian government reached an agreement on pension reform with Italy's four largest labor unions in late July 2007. The government expects to pass legislation to raise the full retirement age to 57. If the new legislation is passed, the

full retirement age will increase from the current age 55 to age 57 over the next 4 years. The existing law requires that the retirement age increase immediately to age 60 on January 1, 2008. The government estimates that once this proposed legislation is enacted, Italians could retire with full pensions 3 or more years earlier at a cost of €10 billion (US$13.6 billion) more than under the existing law.

Controversy Over Closing Of New York Office

From the Auburn Citizen:

Plans to close the Auburn Social Security office this month again sparked opposition from one federal official Wednesday.

In a letter to the agency's commissioner, U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, argues the Social Security Administration is not using an projected $401 million increase in federal funds as anticipated. Arcuri first spoke out against the office's closure in June.

"Through my meetings with SSA staff regarding this matter, it has been made clear that additional administrative funding was a critical step to staving off closure of the Auburn office," the congressman wrote to SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue. "I find it troubling that SSA would move forward with any district office closures this year before the agency's budget for fiscal year 2008 is finalized." ...

"It seems obvious to me that two things have happened: No. 1, SSA has made no effort whatsoever to fill staffing voids in Auburn and No. 2, the decrease in visitors can be attributed to the decrease in available services and convenient office hours for the general public," Arcuri wrote, requesting another meeting with SSA officials.

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Another AARP Article Coming

I got around to listening to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) radio broadcast on Social Security's budget and staffing problems. It is definitely worth listening to. I learned that the AARP is planning another Social Security article to come out in its November Bulletin, this time on the disability backlogs at Social Security.

I have wondered in the past why the AARP was not doing more on the staffing shortages at Social Security. It is good to see them finally working on this. How much difference can AARP make? The AARP Bulletin is distributed to 29 million households. Everybody in Washington pays attention to AARP.

AARP Radio Show On Long Lines At Social Security Offices

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) ran a story in its Bulletin on staffing shortages at Social Security. This was mailed to 29 million households. This is being followed up with a 23 minute radio program to run on about 120 radio stations around the country. You can listen to the program online if you have the Real Player downloaded.

Dickinson Office To Stay Open

A press release from Senator Kent Conrad announces that the Dickinson, ND Social Security Field Office will stay open. The office had been threatened with closure. Note that this office is in the District of Representative Pomeroy, a member of the Social Security Subcommittee.

Politics In Office Closures?

Here is a list of recent Social Security Field office closures I know about with the names and party affiliation of the representatives of those cities in Congress:

• Auburn, NY -- Senators Schumer (D) and Clinton (D), Representative Arcuri (D)
• Bristol, CT -- Senators Dodd (D) and Lieberman (I, but caucuses with Democrats), Reprentatives Larson (D) and Murphy (D)
• Carbondale, PA -- Senators Spector (R, but increasingly acting in an independent manner) and Casey (D), Representative Carney (D)
• Dickinson, ND -- probable closure, but nothing definite -- Senators Conrad (D) and Dorgan (D), Representative Pomeroy (D -- member of Social Security Subcommittee who talked about how he had been lied to by former Commissioner Barnhart and how the ALJ hiring situation at Social Security was a "god-damned outrage")
• San Pedro, CA -- Senators Feinstein (D) and Boxer (D), Representatives Harman (D) and Rohrabacher (R)
• Slidell, LA -- Senators Landrieu (D) and Vitter (R), Representative Jindal (R) (This office closure was probably inevitable due to the population loss in the area following the hurricane.)

I do not want to seem paranoid, but I think I see a pattern here.

Some caveats are in order. I am only reporting the office closures that resulted in newspaper articles that I can access online. It is certainly possible that some office closures have not been covered by local newspapers. Many of these newspaper articles have been generated by a Congressman's office calling a local newspaper to get coverage of the Congressman's efforts to keep a Social Security field office open. Republican Congressmen may be less likely to make the effort to keep a Social Security field office open or to publicize that effort, leading to fewer stories. Also, not all newspapers are accessible online.

Still, if I were a Democratic Congressman whose local Social Security field office were threatened with closure, I would really like to see a list of all the offices that have been or will be closed. I would also like to know the criteria used in making these decisions. I would also like to know whether the the Social Security Commissioner's liaison to the White House has been involved in these decisions.

OIG And Washington Times On Overpayments And Administrative Finality

From The Washington Times, a right wing paper:

The Social Security Administration is resisting proposed rule changes aimed at fixing longstanding errors that have resulted in tens of millions of dollars in erroneous overpayments to beneficiaries.

More than 44,000 people have received approximately $140 million in extra, undeserved payments because of clerical and other errors by the Social Security Administration (SSA), according to recent estimates by the agency's inspector general.

What's more, the SSA has continued making overpayments even after learning of errors because of an internal rule known as "administrative finality."

Under the policy, the SSA cannot reduce benefits for disability and other beneficiaries after four years except in cases of fraud, even if they later learn that incorrect calculations are responsible for the overpayments.

"We believe that when SSA discovers errors in the payments to beneficiaries, the agency should correct them rather than continuing the errors in future benefit payments," Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr., inspector general for the SSA, wrote in a report sent to Congress and SSA officials last week.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) study is available online. Carroll has seemed to be very much more hard line right wing than anyone else working at the Social Security Administration. We cannot know if he was the one to call the Washington Times, but that seems awfully likely. Certainly, he has not called the Washington Times about other studies OIG has done showing the underpayments to Social Security claimants.

In considering this study, I am reminded that on many occasions the idea has been proposed at Social Security to charge interest on overpayments owed to the Social Security Administration. Every time this comes up some alert person in the room always says, "But if we charge interest on the money they owe us, don't we have to pay interest on the money we owe them?" The idea always dies immediately after this question, since it is obvious that Social Security owes far more money than is owed to it. If Social Security does away with its administrative finality rules it will ultimately have to pay out far more than it will collect.